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Oak Lawn is one of the wealthier areas of metropolitan Dallas, with the population consisting mainly of urban professionals. The area is peppered with Upscale townhouses, condos, apartments, and duplexes. Along the Uptown portion on McKinney Avenue and along Turtle Creek Boulevard, there are many new high-rise condominiums and apartments. It is also a very diverse neighborhood with well established areas of older, single family homes.

For most of the 20th century the southern portion of the neighborhood near the intersection of Cedar Springs Road and Harry Hines Blvd was known as "Little Mexico". St. Anne's Catholic school served as the center for the community. With the redevelopment of the neighborhood beginning in the 1980s Little Mexico vanished. Only a few structures of this original community remain for most have been replaced by high rise office buildings, luxury hotels, and condominiums. As of 2010, St Ann's Catholic School, which had closed, is now an upscale restaurant.

Oak Lawn became a magnet for the counterculture movement in the late 1960s due to its inexpensive apartments and its proximity to Oak Lawn Park.

In April 2005 the British government announced that it was closing the Dallas consulate in the summer of 2005; its territory was transferred to the consulate-general in Houston. It was one of 19 British diplomatic missions shut down around that time period.[8] The Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom said that the consulates and embassies closed as a way to decrease costs.[8][9]

The current Sam Houston Elementary campus was scheduled to open in the northern hemisphere fall of 1999.[12] In 2014-2015 its student body was 95% low income; despite that it exceeded its "performance targets". Due to gentrification, Sam Houston's enrollment declined to 201 students in the 2015-2016 school year while it had 302 students in the 2011-2012 school year.[13]

The Oak Lawn Branch of the Dallas Public Library serves the Oak Lawn area. In addition to its regular library holdings, it has the only circulating, non-reference collection of LGBT materials in the US.[16]

Oak Lawn is considered to be the epicenter of Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex's gay- and lesbian-culture. Cedar Springs Road, between Oak Lawn Avenue and Wycliff Avenue, has numerous businesses, retail establishments, restaurants and night clubs catering to the LGBT community. The area has some of Dallas' most renowned gay bars and nightclubs, including Station 4 (formerly The Village Station), The Brick(now closed,[17] Woody's (formerly Moby Dick's), J.R.'s, Sue Ellen's (opened in the Throckmorton Mining Company's old location), The Mining Company (opened in the former location of Sue Ellen's), Havana, The Round-Up Saloon, Drama Room (formerly Mickey's and BJ's--now closed[18]), Alexandre's (formerly After Dark), Illusions (now closed), Pekers (formerly The Side 2 Bar and Phases), Zippers, BJ's NXS (formerly Crews Inn), Pub Pegasus, The Hidden Door, The Tin Room, Cross Bar (now closed), Marty's Live, Cedar Spring Tap House, Dallas Eagle, and others, most of which are located along, or close to, Cedar Springs Road. Oak Lawn is contiguous with the Dallas Design District and less than two miles away from Downtown Dallas.

The area also hosts some of the larger city festivals including the annual Halloween street festival, Dallas' Gay Pride parade, and Easter in the Park at Oak Lawn Park (formerly Robert E. Lee Park).

There is a large concentration of Hispanic owned businesses, restaurants, grocery stores, nightclubs, and retail establishments on the Maple Avenue corridor between the Inwood Road and the North Dallas Tollway.